The first graduating class of the re-socialisation academy

They were in the first graduating class of the re-socialisation academy, three years after the carnage and cosmos of the red-glare that suffocated the city had dispelled back into the parched blue hue of a vague familiarity.

Dressed in a taupe gown with a skull-cap warming the tip of their cranium to the crux of the neck amid a midday climate of glaring sun, they walked alongside six thousand other “demi-youths”, waiting to hear the speech from Victor to commemorate their re-entrance into new society. They wanted to scratch the front of the gown, offering vague relief to their boiling genitals, but knew that could result in re-admission to the academy.

And they’d already been there for what they used to know as three years’ time.

They filed into a pew, waiting impartially as the line took prolonged time to sit before them and kept their eyes focus on the gold heart-shaped embellishment on the back of the skullcap of the demi-youth in front of them, as they had been instructed to.

“It was important to maintain neutral eye contact,” they remembered, “that way you engage without judgement, and respond without emotion.”

That was the first lesson of their re-socialisation, after the city – now a “centre” – had been pillaged by war – now an “event” – and history – now “fables” – had become less a lesson in human – now “beings” – behaviour and instruction and more a warning to lobotomise individuality through the process of emotional dilution.

They sat and faced the front of the hall, listening to footsteps reverberate synchronically throughout the adjoining pews and archway walkthroughs. It would be what would have been called a minute until the ceremony commenced.

They clasped their hands as they sat, folding one of their fingers closer to their laps inwards to scrape at the opposite palm, knowing it was what forbidden. More beings filed in, their skin all the same grey pallor it had been pigmented to on the second month of re-socialisation academy, and beige hair all cut in the midst of their pinned ear lobes.

Their hair, all chemically straightened with an ultra-strength lotion crafted by the chem-minds, their lips injected with a blue hue to match the sky and their eyes, with their emerald irises, blink in eerie synchronisation.

They sat scratching at their skin, trying to figure out what had been there before they entered the re-socialisation academy and found nothing but the same grey, powered flesh it had been made.

“Touching is something we learnt not to do without permission and without the intent of the three dignities of the being body,” they recalled from their lesson, month four.

“Labour, being-labour and saviour,” they remember lecture leader saying.

“Labour is to the body what progress and support is to one another being,” lecture leader said.

“Being-labour, when done the correct way, brings the next pre-youths and demi-youths of the VICTORS to breath, the only way we may continue our work.”

“Saviour is to the body what being is to work – to ensure no component slips into oblivion state and is unable to keep VICTOR continuing.”

They stared at the gold heart, the symbol of VICTOR, in front of them – perpendicular to the line of sight they cast prior – and counted the remaining moments before the VICTOR’s speech.

“Labour, being-labour and saviour,” they remembered.

“The only way to keep VICTOR continuing.”

Victor appeared behind the white curtains, the only symbol of partitioning and concealment permitted. They had been “undone” and “re-aestheticized” behind a white curtain of a similar material and texture, dyeing their pallor, realigning their posture and re-contextualising their eyes, hair, nails and bones to align with VICTOR’s state of beings.

Only Victor was permitted to be higher in height than everyone else, so that they could be visible as every moment they walked into a room. Otherwise they had been the second to receive the skin-curing, re-aestheticization treatment. Their bones were left to length, they were no fused, grinded, shattered and regrown to suit the requirements of VICTOR’s state, and boasted the marrow of the world before them as the last living cells of who they were be.

They were said to speak with a tone the beings remembered as ‘candour’ before tones were no longer allowed and emotions were seen as “human” and “natural”. When they became beings, they became accustomed to the fact that emotions were the demise of the people before them, and the root cause of all conflict pertaining to society.

Victor walked to the centre of the room. They remained, hands clasped, ankles together, eyes forward.

“Beings, today marks the first of generations of occasions to come,” he began.

“You are the first graduating class of the re-socialisation program, founded by the beings of Victor to establish an order to our world markedly different to the past.

Beings came to be in the wake of the carnage, the destruction, the depravity of humanity that existed before us – scorching the Earth to cinders and grey matter. We witnessed what happened when we closed the portals of our hearts to the windows of illuminated information, that polarised how we thought, decimated the information appropriate to us and raped the minds of us all with free thought and unyielding feeling.”

The Victor took the pauses in their speech only they were entitled to, then shifted their tone.

“We saw what we had done to this land – to ourselves. We saw how flesh and thought fuelled rage and terror. We did not need to think of what had to be done to change – we created it, and with that, you all became.”

“As the first graduating class of the re-socialisation academy, you’ve learnt the power of uniformity, the strength of complicity and the quiet calmness born in unilateral neutrality. You are no longer harmed by the views, movements, echoes of the world past that no longer exists.”

“You have been taught emotions and free thought are agents of chaos in an otherwise neutral world.”

“You have learnt that heart’s – our beating, hearts, centred in our chests as the golden necklace we wear to signify life - pump blood to sustain a body designed for function – not powerful a volatile vehicle of emotions, cruelty and chaos.”

“In the academy you unlearnt more than you learnt – you pared back the information you never needed to know to fuel feelings you were never intended to have. You were treated like the molten wastage that coloured our earth before and recast into glimmering, chrome beings of a shining new future.

“You are no longer divided by skin, or thought, manner of speech or appearance – personal views, you’ve learnt, are more likely to be illegal and harmful than they are progressive and you’ve been rebuilt to function as a group, where every component is crucial in equality to sustainability, than individuals polarised against one another in the eternal, tumultuous plight towards proving a sense of worth.”

“As I speak to you now, I take comfort in knowing none of you will remember the weight of the words I use to describe what was – only their basic definitions, categorised under a string of lines in your mind.”

“You have been built to understand, not interpret, speak, not converse, and exist – not live as though you were held any importance over another.”

Victor took a breath, and sipped from the flask of water they kept in their gown pocket.

“You are not the start of the future, nor it’s precedent – you are the status quo,” they said, panning their eyes across the hall.”

“Let this be a moment you don’t dwell on as you step into your true lives.”

“Remember there is no us – there are only beings, of which we are the proponents of.”

No one clapped when the Victor fell silent – they sat, silent, soaking in his words and committing them to memory.

And then the hall rose and collected the paper that would confirm their entrance to the state of VICTOR.

They didn’t get a moment to shake hands, hear their name called before the entire hall.

There was no need to – they didn’t have one anymore.